Embryonic Stem Cells
Standing in the voting booth, Raina hesitated. It was November 2, 2004, and she had to make her
final decision on how to vote for California Proposition 71, the California Stem Cell Research and
Cures Initiative. Proposition 71, a $3 billion bond measure, would fund embryonic stem (ES) cell
research at facilities across the state for the next ten years. Raina knew that Proposition 71 had
widespread support, including that of Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and several Nobel Prize-
winning scientists, but she was also well aware of the controversy surrounding ES cell research.
Well before Election Day, Raina had taken the time to inform herself about the ongoing ES cell
debate. She learned that ES cell lines are obtained by removing a group of cells, called the inner
cell mass, from an embryo that is about five days old (also known as a blastocyst), and growing
the cells in a Petri dish. The cells are prized by researchers because they are pluripotent,
meaning that they have the potential to differentiate into a wide range of different types of cells if
properly stimulated. Proponents of ES cell research say that such cells could be used to cure
conditions such as Parkinson’s disease, diabetes, heart disease, Alzheimer’s disease, cystic
fibrosis, and spinal cord injuries. In addition, ES cells could be studied to help scientists
understand the basic processes of human development, and used to test new drugs.
ES cell research opponents say that it should be restricted because it requires the destruction of
human life. Raina found this issue to be one of great concern. She learned that the ES cell lines
currently used for research are obtained from embryos left over from in vitro fertilization (IVF).
These embryos are voluntarily donated, and otherwise would be discarded. Raina wondered if
embryos, even those so early in development, should be considered human beings. If so, then
producing an excess of them for IVF and then discarding them would be wrong. Might it also be
wrong to benefit from their sacrifice?
Raina had read about stem cells from other sources besides embryos. Some, known as
embryonic germ cells, may be obtained from aborted or miscarried fetuses, but this source is
subject to the same sort of controversy as ES cells. Some very promising results have come from
research using stem cells taken from the umbilical cord and placenta, and adult tissues such as
bone marrow and parts of the brain. In fact, some of these non-embryonic cells have already
been used to treat medical conditions, including blood disorders, spinal cord injury and heart
attack damage. Such stem cells are obtained without harming embryos or fetuses, and for this
reason their use meets with few ethical objections. However, they appear to be more limited in
their ability to differentiate than ES cells.
Finally, after weighing the arguments one last time, Raina cast her ballot. The next day, she
learned that Proposition 71 had passed with 59% of the vote. Now it is possible that similar
initiatives may appear on the ballots of other states.
Questions
1. How do you think Raina voted on Proposition 71? How would you have voted? Why?
2. Do you think that a five-day-old embryo should be accorded the status of a human
person? If not, why not? If so, do the potential benefits of ES cell research outweigh the
ethical objections? Explain.
3. In August 2001, President George W. Bush approved the use of federal funding for ES
cell research, but only on cell lines already in existence, in order to avoid the destruction
of additional human embryos. (ES cell research funding from other sources was
unaffected.) Critics say that existing ES cell lines have only a limited lifespan before their
usefulness for research is lost, and that the number of available lines is insufficient. Do
you agree or disagree with President Bush’s decision? Explain.
4. Should ES cell research prove fruitful, it raises the issue of a particular type of cloning
known as therapeutic cloning. Therapeutic cloning would not result in the production of a
new human being, but it would mean creating an embryo from which ES cells could be
removed that would match the cells of a person’s own body. This would prevent the
rejection of transplanted cells by the immune system of the recipient. Would you support
the use of therapeutic cloning in order to produce ES cells for treatment of disease or
injury? Why or why not?
5. An alternative way of avoiding the transplant rejection problem mentioned in question 4
would be to reprogram adult body cells and make them into stem cells. Research in this
area is already underway. Do you think that research efforts currently focused on ES
cells should be shifted to this venue, or that a variety of approaches should be pursued?
Explain your answer.
Creationism
The week before the start of the new semester would be a busy one for Sandra Maxwell. As one
of three biology teachers at Irving Community College in Marshall, Alabama, she would have to
meet with the entire science department, get her laboratory ready, and review the new textbooks.
Last year the department had gone through the long, tedious adoption procedure that involved
reading and rating over fifteen different books. They had narrowed the fifteen down to three, and
the community college board picked from those. Sandra really didn't care which one they had
picked; no matter what, she would have to redo her lessons to fit a new book.
There was even more about her new textbook that Sandra didn't know. The Alabama State Board
of Education had adopted an anti-evolution insert to go in all high school and state college biology
texts. The insert stated that evolution is a "controversial theory" accepted by "some scientists."
When Sandra saw the insert, she was upset. Could she teach creationism?
Creationism, broadly speaking, is the view that God (the Judeo-Christian God) created the
universe, life, and the various kinds of life. Some creationists have sought to undermine the
theory of evolution by claiming, for example, that the earth is only 10,000 years old, not 4.5 billion,
and that therefore evolution hasn't had time to occur. They also have argued that DNA could not
have developed on its own without the help of an "intelligent agent"-namely, God.
Ever since State v Scopes, the famous Tennessee "Monkey Trial" in 1925 (dramatized in the
1960 film Inherit the Wind), the biology classroom has been the site of a battle pitting science
against religion. In the era of the Scopes trial, American fundamentalists had pressed for, and
achieved in some states, the passage of anti-evolution laws. More recently, as reported in
Science magazine in 1996, creationists have attempted a new strategy: persuading local school
boards to give "equal time" in school curricula to alternative theories such as "scientific
creationism." In several states-Ohio and Georgia being two-legislatures are considering bills that
will require biology teachers to present "alternative theories" to evolution.
Sandra Maxwell and her fellow biology teachers were confused and unhappy about the situation.
As a teacher, Sandra wasn't sure what to do.
Questions
1. What should Sandra do? Give three options.
2. If you were a member of the legislature in any of the states considering the bills referred
to, would you vote to include "creationism" in the curriculum? Give three reasons why or
why not.
3. Some biology teachers are skipping evolution altogether in order to avoid the
controversy. Do you think evolution should be left out of the curriculum? Why or why not?
4. Although many of the "anti-evolution laws" have been struck down at the state and
federal level, groups have found other ways to promote "creationism." One of these is
getting onto local school boards who select textbooks. What might textbook companies
do to avoid problems with these school boards? Give three options.
5. In 1982, in McLean v Arkansas Board of Education, a federal district court ruled that
"creation science" is religion, and in 1987, the Supreme Court reaffirmed that in Edwards
v Aguillard, ruling that "creationism" could not be taught in the public schools. Speculate
on the reasoning behind these rulings.
Smoking Ban
Next Tuesday is the election, and Marcia Oster doesn't know how she will vote. Marcia's state is
asking its constituents to vote on a ban on smoking in all public places, including restaurants,
businesses, and bars. The proposed ban would require businesses to set aside an area a few
feet outside the business where people may smoke. California, for example, has such a measure
in place. It prohibits all smoking of tobacco products in 100% of enclosed places of employment.
The objective, as cited in the law, is "to reduce employee exposure to environmental tobacco
smoke." Smokers may have an enclosed smoking room, if it has proper ventilation. Employers
must also post nonsmoking signs at the entrance to their establishment. This includes all
restaurants and bars. The California ban was implemented gradually over a five-year period; in
1998, the third phase, which affects bars and clubs, went into effect.
Many business people, especially restaurant and bar owners, oppose smoking bans such as the
one in California. These owners argue that they should be able to operate their businesses as
they please and that government-imposed smoking bans take away that right. They are also
afraid revenues will decrease if smokers no longer patronize their establishments. However,
some studies show that smoking bans have no significant effect on overall profits.
Although Marcia doesn't smoke, both her parents do, and they have told her many times that they
feel discriminated against by groups pushing for nonsmoking areas and by laws that restrict
where smokers can go. It doesn't bother them that they cannot smoke while shopping, but they
are angry about the proposed ban in restaurants and bars. Most restaurants in their state already
have nonsmoking sections, and Marcia's parents feel this is enough.
On the other side of the issue, Marcia’s friend Cathy is very allergic to cigarette smoke. Her
physicians have told her to stay away from smoke whenever possible because it triggers her
asthma. While smokers claim that smoking bans infringe on their personal freedom, Cathy argues
that people should only be allowed to do what they want as long as their actions do not harm
others. She points out that if you are around smokers, you have no choice but to breathe in the
smoke they exhale, and that the harmful effects of breathing secondhand smoke have been
documented. The Centers for Disease Control report that an estimated 3,000 lung cancer deaths
and 62,000 deaths from coronary heart disease are attributed to secondhand smoke annually. In
children, secondhand smoke is also linked to sudden infant death syndrome, low birth weight,
chronic middle ear infections, and respiratory illnesses. In fact, some scientists have determined
that exhaled smoke actually contains more carbon monoxide than smoke inhaled directly from
cigarettes.
Questions
1. How would you vote if you were Marcia?
2. Do you think a state should be able to regulate where a person smokes? Why or why
not?
3. Businesses, too, may suffer from a smoking ban due to the loss of customers. Many bars
in California have filed suit to stop the ban, but so far they have not succeeded. Should
businesses have the right to decide who comes into and what is done on their premises?
Why or why not?
4. Can you think of any compromises or alternatives to a total smoking ban?
5. The California law demands that an owner ask nonemployees to stop smoking and take
reasonable steps to stop them. What would be some “reasonable steps”?
6. Many opponents of the California law say that it "deprives people from using a legal
product in a private establishment." Should the government of California or any state
make cigarettes illegal? Why or why not?
Frozen Embryos
Acorn Fertility Clinic has a space problem. Its director, Franklin Pearce, just presented Acorn's
Board of Directions with the problem, and now a vigorous discussion was going on. Pearce left
the room to think.
The problem is partly a result of the clinic's success. Since its inception ten years earlier, the
clinic has almost tripled its number of patients, and its success in achieving pregnancies in
infertile couples is equal to the national average.
The clinic's greatest success has been in the use of in vitro fertilization. This procedure involves
fertilizing the egg outside the body and then placing the zygote in the uterus of the patient.
Usually up to 15 zygotes are produced, but only a few are placed back in the woman. The rest
are frozen and held in liquid nitrogen.
Infertility specialists have been freezing embryos since 1984, with much success. The length of
time an embryo can be held in a frozen state and "thawed out" succcessfully is not known. With
better and better freezing techniques, the time is increasing. Recently a baby was born from an
embryo that had been frozen for eight years.
Acorn Fertility has been freezing embryos since its inception. It has a large number of such
embryos-thousands, in fact-some frozen for ten years. The parents of many of these embryos are
present or past patients who have no need for them. With its patient base increasing, Acorn
needs the space for new embryos.
The problem is not Acorn's alone. Ten thousand embryos are frozen each year in the United
States, and the numbers are increasing. Many of these are sitting in liquid nitrogen in fertility
clinics like Acorn.
Now sitting in his office, Dr. Pearce wondered what the Board of Directions would decide to do
with the embryos that aren't being used.
Questions
1. What should the board decide? List five things that might be done.
2. Dr. Pearce is a medical doctor who has sworn to uphold life. What should his view be?
3. In a number of legal cases, frozen embryos have created questions. Who owns them?
Are they property? Are they children? In general, courts have decided that they are
neither, and that they should be left frozen because no person can be made a parent if
he or she does not want to be. Is this the right decision? Why or why not?
4. In Australia, a couple died before the woman could be implanted with the frozen embryos
that had been produced from the couple's eggs and sperm. The courts, upon being
asked to decide if the couple's money belonged to the embryos, said no, and ruled that
the embryos could not be implanted in another woman and should be destroyed. This
was 15 years ago, and the embryos are still frozen. What should be done with them?
5. In the future, we will be able to successfully thaw and implant embryos that have been
frozen for 25 to 30 years. What problems do you foresee with this? What benefits? List
three of each.
Treatment of Critically Ill Newborns
Art and Julia Inskeep's new baby, Joshua, was born premature at 24 weeks of pregnancy. When
they went to see him in the neonatal intensive care unit, they were not allowed to touch him. He
was so small. His feet weren't even as big as a fingertip.
The doctors don't know what caused Julia to go into premature labor. But when Joshua was born,
they told the Inskeeps that there had been successes in saving 24-week-old babies. With the
newest machinery and techniques, the doctors said, the baby had a good chance of surviving.
Neonatologists, who study newborns, are concerned with outcomes. The more premature a baby,
the worse its outcomes. A normal pregnancy length is 36 weeks, but babies have survived after
being born as early as 23 weeks. The biggest problem is the lack of a substance called
surfactant. This fatty substance coats the inner surface of the lungs and keeps them from
collapsing. During its time in the uterus, the baby breathes fluid, and its oxygen comes from the
mother's blood.
A number of advances are helping younger and younger babies survive. One is the development
of a surfactant taken from calf fetuses. Another is a respirator called an oscillator. Instead of
delivering the normal respiration rate of 30 breaths per minute, the oscillator gives 900 tiny puffs
per minute. This keeps the baby's lungs constantly inflated, and oxygen seems to enter the
bloodstream more efficiently.
The procedure, however, can be dangerous. The technology is usually used with babies who are
at least 25 weeks developed; the less developed the baby, the more likely the occurrence of a
brain bleed, which would cause brain damage and have other serious consequences.
The doctors have asked the Inskeeps to decide whether or not to have Joshua connected to the
oscillator. Art and Julia have never had a more difficult decision.
Questions
1. What should the Inskeeps do?
2. What information do the Inskeeps need to make the decision? List four things.
3. A number of years ago, doctors would make this decision without consulting the parents.
Give two reasons this might be wrong. Give two reasons this might be best.
4. If the doctors connect Joshua to the oscillator and he then dies, are there grounds for a
malpractice suit? Why or why not?
5. If the doctors don't connect Joshua to the oscillator and he dies, are there grounds for a
malpractice suit? Why or why not?
6. Sometimes next of kin must sign an informed consent form, by which they acknowledge
that the doctor has told them certain information and that they agree to a certain
procedure or medical plan. Whom does this protect?
Of Cats and Clones
In December 2004, a tabby kitten named Little Nicky made headlines for being the first cloned-to-
order pet in the United States. The original Nicky was a cat that died at the age of 17 years. His
owner, Julie, chose to have some of Nicky’s tissue “banked” so that he could be cloned. The
company that produced Little Nicky, California-based Genetic Savings & Clone, Inc., also funded
the creation of the very first cloned cat, CC, in 2002, and made the first cloned pet cats, Tabouli
and Baba Ganoush, in the United Kingdom earlier in 2004. Cloning pets should be a very
profitable business indeed: Little Nicky cost Julie $50,000. How do you make a clone like Little
Nicky? The first mammal to be cloned from a somatic (body) cell of an adult was Dolly the sheep.
She was made in 1996 at the Roslin Institute in Scotland, using a technique called somatic cell
nuclear transfer. In this technique, the nucleus of a cell from a donor’s body is combined with an
enucleated egg (one with its nucleus removed) from a female of the same species, and the
resulting cell is stimulated to start dividing and grow into an embryo. The embryo is then placed in
the uterus of a surrogate mother to continue its development. Although additional sheep, as well
as pigs, cattle, goats, horses, rabbits, and mice, have been cloned using somatic cell nuclear
transfer, one problem with this method is the low survival rate. Most embryos do not survive long
enough to be implanted in a surrogate mother. And of those that do, almost one-quarter of the
clones born have health problems so severe that they do not reach adulthood. These problems
are thought to stem from the fact that the donor cell has already differentiated, and as a result its
nuclear material is structurally different from that in a fertilized egg with respect to associated
proteins. Some of the proteins associated with the nuclear chromatin may get carried over to the
enucleated egg, where they interfere with development. CC was made using somatic cell nuclear
transfer, but most consumers probably would not opt for this technique for cloning their pets
because of its low success rate. In 2003, a new cloning technology known as chromatin transfer
became available. In chromatin transfer, the chromatin is made to condense, much as it would
prior to cell division. The condensed chromatin is treated to remove any extraneous materials
prior to being injected into the enucleated egg. This method has resulted in a greater rate of
cloning success, and was used to create Tabouli, Baba Ganoush, and Little Nicky. It is likely that
there will be many more cloned pets. In fact, Genetic Savings & Clone looks to clone up to 50
cats over the next year, and plans to include dogs in the near future.
Questions
1. What are some of the reasons an individual might give for having a pet cloned? Cost
aside, would you choose to have a pet of yours cloned? Why or why not?
2. The first cloned cat, CC, looks different from her genetic donor, Rainbow, due to a well-
understood complication involved in cloning a calico cat. The two also reportedly have
different personality traits. On the other hand, Little Nicky, Tabouli, and Baba Ganoush
look like their donors, and their owners claim that their personalities are identical. What
do you think cloning may teach us about the roles of nature and nurture in development?
3. Critics of Genetic Savings & Clone and its customers say there is no justification for
having a pet cloned when so many dogs and cats are being euthanized because no one
will adopt them. Do you agree or disagree with this point of view? Explain.
4. Cloning may help save endangered species that have too few members to be rescued by
a typical breeding program. Some scientists who are even more optimistic hope to revive
extinct species via cloning. What would you predict about the ability of such species to
survive without further cloning? Does it make sense to start banking tissue samples from
endangered species for future cloning before their numbers reach critical lows? Why or
why not?
5. The cloning of primates, including humans, is proving to be more difficult than the cloning
of some other mammals. However, it is likely just a matter of time until technological
advances make this possible. What reasons can you think of for some people to want to
have themselves cloned? What issues would likely arise, for both the clone and the
donor?
DNA Dragnets
Mark Silano lived in a small town that rarely had serious problems. Recently, however, there had
been a particularly brutal crime. A young girl had been found murdered in one of the town's parks.
It had been almost three months and the police didn't seem to be getting anywhere.
As he was skimming his local newspaper, Mark came across an advertisement with a large black
border. He read it carefully:
All males between the ages of 18 and 25 are asked to come in
voluntarily to help in the investigation of the Anna P. murder case. One
vial of blood will be drawn from each volunteer for the purpose of DNA
testing.
At first Mark didn't understand the implications of the ad. Then he remembered a show he had
seen on television, which told about DNA fingerprinting and how criminals could be identified from
tissue samples found at a crime scene. Mark was 22 and so fell into the category asked for in the
ad. He thought he should volunteer, but he was really frightened of needles. He didn't want to
give blood.
The first investigation to use DNA forensics took place in the United Kingdom in 1983. All the men
in a town where a murder had occurred were asked to give blood samples for DNA testing. Colin
Pitchfork, who was the murderer, tried to pay a number of people to give blood for him. When one
man did, but then realized what this meant, Pitchfork was arrested.
DNA dragnets, as they are often called, are now used all over the United Kingdom, and are
increasingly used in the United States.
Questions
1. What should Mark do?
2. What might happen if Mark does not volunteer?
3. Can authorities force Mark to give blood if he does not volunteer?
4. Why, do you think, does this technique work better in the United Kingdom than in the
United States?
5. In one case, a baby was found abandoned. Police officials asked for DNA samples from
all girls in the community who were between the ages of 12 and 18 and absent from
school on the day of the birth. Do you see any problems with this procedure?
6. If an action is "voluntary," can one refuse to perform it? Why or why not?